Our Mission in Peru
Father Chris Dunn, OFM, is pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes parish in the Mateo Pumacahua de Villa municipality. He is one of five Franciscan missioners from New York’s Holy Name of Jesus Province serving in Peru. Four of them serve in the shanty towns, or pueblos jovenes (young towns), as the Peruvian government refers to them.
Father Paul Breslin, OFM, is the Guardian of the Franciscan Mission House next door to the Lourdes church and hall. Across the Pan-American highway and 10 miles south, Father Anthony Wilson, OFM, is pastor of hillside St. Ann’s Parish, and Father Carlos Sarmiento, OFM, assists at St. Ann’s, while at the same times opening a new parish nearby along the Lurin River. Father Mariano Gagnón has done heroic mission work with the indigenous Ashaninka people in the jungle region of central Peru, saving them from annihilation when they opposed the Sendero Luminoso revolutionaries in the late 1980s.
Fathers Tony Wilson, Chris Dunn and other pastors in the young towns face a host of similar problems: unemployment, alcoholism, domestic violence, broken families, single mothers, delinquency, drugs and gangs. “In both parishes, 85 percent of the residents are Catholic, but only 10 percent practice their faith,” Tony reports. He and Chris offer a variety of programs that go beyond countering the problems by forming a lively and mature faith among their parishioners: the Neocatechumenate Way, Charismatic Renewal, Secular Franciscans, retreats, youth clubs and senior groups.
